***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

hard disk drives get fragmented through use.

this has to do with the file system of the drive and how stuff is put in there.


let's put it this way: Stuff is put into a hard-drive in several blocks. These blocks ideally are all next to each other on the hard-drive. In reality this doesn't always happen, especially if you delete stuff and then add stuff back onto the hard-drive...and then uh...do that a lot.


so you have part of a file in these 10 blocks on one end of the hdd and the rest of it on the other end of the disk, meaning there is seek time for the thing that's reading the platter.


Now randomize that really really really REALLY badly too. So stuff is every which where and of course it has to be read anyway and interpreted as the file.

that's what a fragmented hard-drive means. It takes it longer to read files and well that can slow performance (of both windows and games and programs, etc)

defragmenting a hard-drive fixes this by reorganizing the blocks. It tends to take all night.


this is only for physical hard-drives. Solid state drives don't have this problem since well, there's no arm reading the platters of the drive, there's no seek time or anything like that so defragmenting a SSD is pointless (and can slow it down)

 

Civ5 Runs pretty good though I usually played windowed only mode.

 

Thanks Draco for clearing that up.

I've only had my E14 for 5 days I was lucky enough to get the radiance, but its a beatiful machine. It stays icy cool even underload, Im going to clock the GPU to 550 or more, since 450 is to low. If I do this, what kind of performance boost are we talking about?

Is it marginal? Will it increase the temp. of the laptop?

thanks.

I'll post results of games soon to help the thread along.

 

I'm using the msi afterburner to overclock the 5650. The gpu seems to be locked at 450/800 cause everytime i click apply, it goes back to default. How you guys overclock this?

 

go into the folder where you installed afterburner


open up the msiafterburner.cfg file

chance allowunofficial overclocking to = 1 instead of 0 (which is what it currently equals, it's near the bottom and may not be worded/have a space in it the way I typed it)

 

I am unable to save it after editing it for some reason???

 

Run notepad as admin

 

So what kind of framerate loss can I except in the jump from the laptop's native resolution to 1080p? I ordered the i7-720qm model. I'm only really interested in playing CiV 5, WoW, SC2, and Dragon Age.

 

I am getting sub 20 fps on TF2 with 15 bots on dustbowl half the time. Now the GPU can't be this bad but I can't figure out what is causing this.

Any ideas?

Oh and everything is on lowest with multicore on and 720p (not even 900p..)

 

can anyone answer my question???

 

This one? I can...

I did.
_____

Another question? I dont know.

 

Are you sure you're using the 5650 and not the intel integrated?
I have the framerate locked at 30 in TF2 because I have livestream running in the background. I'm sure it would be higher without livestream locking it.
(I have all the settings in TF2 maxed out, 900p resolution)

 

well it is possible he's getting stuck on "throttled" 5650 mode.

it happens to me whenever I unplug and/or swap to the intel and back.


you have to go into graphics properties, go down to powerplay, turn it off, hit apply, and turn it back on to get the gpu to run normally again

 

I overclocked to 550/900 and after 1 hour of SC2, temperatures never went above 60 C. Impressive!
Do ssds just increase the load times and not framerates?

 

@Mike415 lolz no not that i posted a comment earlier,

Join Date: Nov 2010
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Re: ***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***
if i were to hook up the envy 14 to a 1080p monitor, with the res at 1080p...what kind of settings on games like nfs hot pursuit, black ops, and starcraft 2 would i be able to play on at 30fps?

 

i am SOOO happy right now...
this is my 3rd envy 14 (i5-580m [broken screen hinge], i7-740qm [short battery life], then back to i5-580m)

and entire process took over a month and a half, and now i am finally landed with the perfect computer.

GPU overclocks STABLY!! to 565/1000 (can probably go higher, but didn't test yet)-----> translates to a whopping 8510 3dmark06 score (!!!!!!!!!!) on 1280x768 resolution.

considering the 4830 on the envy 15 gets 7800ish on 1280x1024 resolution... the performance of the 5650 overclocked is pretty much approaching the higher tier graphics card!!!

anyways, this happened after my 3rd envy, the first two were hovering about 8000-8100 when overclocked.

 

when I overclocked to 600/950 things started crashing

 

do you have an i5?

i don't think i5's can over clock to 600, MSI's upper limit is 585, and i5's can't use GPU tool

 

Where do you find graphics properties? Are you talking about configure switchable graphics? And doing Highperformance gpu and powersaving?

 

By the way everyone, I'm sure some of you know, but I have found something that will help a lot of people. I have been facing a lot of issues with gaming at a comfortable setting in all games with good framerates. I tried overclocking and when I overclock to 500 the computer crashes on mass effect, all valve games, and sometimes star craft 2. Now when I run with no overclock my games run super slow. I chatted with hp and he told me to change my virtual memory settings.

Goto Control panel
System and security -> system
On the left panel click on Advanced System settings
Click on the Advanced tab -> settings
On performance click on Settings
On Advanced click on change
Uncheck Automatically manage paging file and click on Custom size
Change the initial size and maximum size to the recommended or 1.5 times the ram of your computer.

When the computer didn't crash, overclocking helped a lot, however I crashed all the time. This little trick has improved me to play mass effect at full 1600X900 with max settings except one ultra setting with the same framerate that I had when I overclocked to 500/800.

Just thought I would share with you guys this info... Enjoy gaming ladies and gents.

 

no I'm talking about right click --> graphic properties (to get into the catayst control center, you need to be on the ATI card) ---> click on that thing in the top left named graphics --- > click on powerplay ---> untick enable power play, hit apply, retick enable powerplay, hit apply


that will fix the "aww crap we're stuck on maxing out at battery saving powerplay mode for some dumb reason" bug until you unplug the computer again (and/or swap gpus)

 

it's interesting that you need to use page files when you have 6 gigs of memory 0_o

i've been gaming fine with 4gbs even though i now upgraded to 8gb

i've always turned off the page files instead of using them as well, and i never ran into any troubles even when running multiple games + virtual machines

 

Yeah, I know it's bizzare and has seriously pissed me off. My games were slowing down soo bad. I have no idea why, but this solution is my salvation.

* When you say you turned off page files, do you mean you selected no paging file? and if so have you ever ran it automatically?

 

Weird, I haven't come up on that issue, unless that's why games are slowing down, but I don't think that was the reason.

 

I changed my pagefile from automatic to manual ~5800 MB, and my free hard drive space went UP even though my pagefile file was ~900 MB and it's now 5.8 GB.

(since I've been experiencing related crashes in related games, I figured this is a smart move - but I'm still keeping my underclock to be safe)

 

So I just got my Envy 14 in the mail (i7-720qm model) and am having great performance with Dragon Age, but terrible performance with Starcraft II. With all settings at ultra running at 1280x720 I'm getting 10-15 fps in many situations. What gives? From what I've read in this thread I should be able to max out SC II and stay above 30fps.

 

well I'm on a different set of drivers so that could be part of it.

also on one of the original envy 14s (this could be a hardware issue in other words that some drivers help to mitigate). 10.8 ati worked fine. not sure how 10.7 hp, which is what you probably are using, worked since I didn't use 'em that much

the latest ati drivers screw it up each time.

 

ultra is a no go with any 5650 card for starcraft 2.

it requires a 58xx or so I think just because well...sc2 is actually pretty demanding.

high should be fine (shader wise). you can probably ramp up most anything else with shaders set at high but putting those on ultra or extreme (if that still exists/was put back in) won't work that well on the envy 14

 

I bumped the settings down to high and I'm still unable to break 30 fps at 720p even. I'm pretty bummed out, especially after reading about people in this thread who are playing this game in mostly ultra settings.

 

Not entirely sure what you were expecting. Starcraft 2 is one of the more demanding games this gen. Trying to run it on Ultra is like trying to run Crysis on Very High - it's not going to happen on a 5650.

You could try overclocking it, though. You should see a considerable boost.

Also, if you want to compare, the desktop equivalent of the 5650 is probably something like the 4670

 

I don't really remember breaking 30 fps on high.

though it depended.

it runs it at medium fine for the most part (few random spots on maps drop me from 60 to 30 for no apparent reason)

 

i dont know about 1600x900, but on 1366x768 mine can break 30fps on ultra with some overclocking, it hits 30fps most of the time on high with stock clocks.

 

Can anyone answer my question please?

 

So is overclocking the GPU worth the effort? Is there really that big of a performance boost? In addition have you guys ran into issues with overheating when OCing?

 

Bump for knowledge. I'm still in the market for a lappy, and magus is very dear to my heart

 

no.

OCing it is not worth the effort imo.

this isn't a acer 3820tg.

 

Alright good to know. I've figured out the best settings, which seems to be at 720p (really wish I could play this in 1080p, but I guess the GPU simply can't handle it) with all medium settings and texture quality bumped to ultra.

*sigh* It seems I can't max out Dragon Age either. How on earth are people in this thread getting 30-40fps with everything maxed out?

 

PLEEEAAASE someone answer my question!!!!

 

depends on the settings.

but the 5650 would probably struggle to reach 30fpsish for anything above medium at 1080p (and maybe medium won't do so well too...unsure. I don't think many of us have hooked it up to a 1080p monitor to see)

 

You're SOL when it comes to running games at 1080p. I've found that 1280x720p is really the way to go, and even then I still have to play most games at medium to high settings. This isn't a gaming laptop, but gets the job done.

 

Was searching through this thread and read this. How is this guy getting such great performance?! Is the overclocking really making that much of difference?

EDIT: Also is there some reason why my Envy 14 is showing my native resolutation as 1366x768? Isn't it 1600x900?

 

it's 1336x768 unless you have the radiance screen (which had a short run, basically if you bought an envy sometime after september/october you don't have the radiance)

 

Ah. Thanks.

 

The Envy 15 can hit 12000 Marks at 1280x768. The 1024 part really affects things. Sadly, the 5650 in the E14 is downright crippled as a mid-tier card and always will be. The dv6 has the 5650 clocked at 550 Core and that one has potential to be 5730 territory. However, your OC on a E14 5650 is really good.

 

How come it had such a short run? Is it because of the graphics card? I have the radiance screen and love it

 

no its because the manufacturer of the radiance screen went out of business..well at least thats the rumor

 

Hi guys,

im having difficulty running assassins creed 1. i am getting about 12-18fps when playing the game with everythign set at 3/4. has anyone else encountered this?

seems odd since i can run other games such as crysis ok. here is my system:

HP Envy 14
Intel Core i7 Q720 1.6GHz
4GM Ram
64 bit
just updated catalyst drivers

SOLVED: for some reason you have to manually start the game via the DX10 file in the game directory. fps is now about 30

 

i was able to play mw2 on max settings on 1080p settings, didnt try any games. I don't think i had OC'ed my card that time. It ran GREAT on the big screen though, using HDMI. Around 60 fps, averaged

 

Maxed out black ops, w/o AA, no shadows, i run ~60fps, with card OC'ed to 500/800. Even w/o OC, i ran 50+fps. I saw a youtube video of Just cause, seemed to run fine. Btw i have radiance display.

 

Hmmm... I have my Sennheiser HD555's connected to my Envy 14 and the sound is all distorted and quiet, a problem that I don't have when connecting external computer speakers. What gives?